


A Soul To Steal

by natlet



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-21
Updated: 2011-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:50:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natlet/pseuds/natlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So this is the end of the world. (See notes for specific warnings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Soul To Steal

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Written for the Graffixation challenge over at [oz_graffiti](http://oz_graffiti.livejournal.com). Instead of writing a story that would then be illustrated, we started with some beautiful artwork and wrote some fic inspired by it. I picked a lovely piece by Trillingstar; see it [here](http://s879.photobucket.com/albums/ab353/spook_me/Graffixation/?action=view&current=Graffixation_Trillingstar.png). Huge thanks to Trill for the beautiful piece, and to Ozsaur for running the whole thing! <3
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings: Apocalyptic setting. Aftermath of an unspecified civilization-ending event; graphic descriptions. Multiple major character deaths.

When Beecher wakes, he's alone.

He tries to sit up, but after the first half inch his head screams, vision going blurry and red-tinged, and he gives up quickly. His view's cut in half, segmented by blades of grass, but he can see the bus on its side, spewing smoke; he can see dark, still shapes in the grass; he can see grass and emptiness stretching off toward the horizon. He can't see any motion, can't hear any voices, can't even hear anyone else breathing. In a way, it's almost nice. Six years in Oz and he'd never realized how much he missed the quiet.

Beecher lets his head drop back to the ground, and closes his eyes.

*

"Beecher. Hey, Beecher. Come on, man. Wake up."

The pain is less this time, the screaming in his head backed off to a dull roar. Part of him wonders how long he's been here. Murphy helps him sit up, one hand firm and steady on Beecher's shoulder, and he never thought he'd be glad to see anyone wearing that damn uniform - but right now, he is.

"What happened?" His voice is rough and thick, and he swallows, trying to clear the fuzz from his mouth.

Murphy looks at him carefully. "Bus crashed, Beecher," he says.

Well, that's pretty fucking obvious, Beecher almost snaps. He bites the words back at the last second. "Where are the others?" he asks, instead.

Can't be more than a couple seconds that pass, but it feels like forever. Beecher looks at the blackened shell of the bus, the bodies of people he used to know. Murphy had managed to cover some of their faces, but it was too much for any one guy to do alone, and Beecher's silently thankful he'd been out so long. "Just us, now," Murphy says, and it comes out steady and even but Beecher recognizes something that says, don't push, don't ask.

"Should we - is help coming? Should we go try to find - "

Murphy laughs. It's sharp and short and not at all amused. "I don't think anybody can fuckin' help us now," he says, and Beecher looks past him toward the highway in the distance, at the other cars blown off the road and scattered in the grass, at the treeline, some of the huge trunks bent and splintered, all of them leaning in one direction, the weird shimmery cast to the sky, and he feels something strange and heavy and resigned settle in the center of his chest.

So this is the end of the world.

*

Murphy gets him up, gets him moving. Everything Beecher does hurts, but after a while he almost starts to appreciate the pain. It gives him something to focus on. "What do we do now?" he asks, and Murphy shrugs.

"We shouldn't be too far from Lardner," he says. "Anything's gonna have made it out here, it'll be the prisons."

"So we'll head that way?"

"So we'll head that way," Murphy says, and they leave the wreck of the bus behind. They'd made it a good way off the highway, into some farmer's unused field; for a while, they're alone, just the sound of their boots on the hard-baked track, Beecher's own heart beating in his ears. Murphy's silent, moving with a weird single-minded sort of determination, and it's easy enough for Beecher to just look at the sky, the dirt road in front of him, and pretend he's somewhere else. By now, it's almost second nature.

But they come through a row of short trees, draw close to the highway, and then it's impossible to miss - the ground is littered with bodies.

Beecher tries not to look, tries to keep his eyes from lingering, but it's a lost cause; he can't help it, picks out a teenager wearing a NYU hoodie, a brunette woman in a skirt. Most of them bear marks of car accidents, burns and crushed limbs and blunt-force trauma, but Beecher recognizes a stab wound here, a gunshot there, and in a sick sort of way he's thankful for his time in Oz.

In more than one sick sort of way, really - the second he thinks of Oz he can't help feeling a pang of - this would have been Chris's world, violence and bloodshed and no regrets. He would have thrived here, if he had lived long enough to see it.

The highway is in worse shape than he expects. SUVs and sedans and station wagons stand abandoned on the pavement; some smashed together in smoking, mangled piles, others pulled onto the median and left with their doors open. Beecher and Murphy pick a careful path along the shoulder of the road, walking sometimes on pavement, sometimes in the knee-high grass. It's rough going; they walk for what must be hours, but Beecher feels like they've barely covered any ground at all when Murphy says, "Sun's going down; we should get off the road."

Beecher thinks "off the road" is maybe sort of subjective now, but he follows Murphy away from the pavement and into the dense brush of the windbreak. Under the trees and out of the sun, the air's cool, moist. Beecher shivers. "We need to start a fire," he says.

Murphy shakes his head. "Too obvious," he says. "We'll be seen."

"We're from Oz," Beecher snaps. "Do you want to be seen, or do you want to fucking freeze to death?"

For a second, Murphy looks like he's going to argue the point; then he shrugs, stoops and begins to gather twigs and small branches into a pile, and there's nobody around to keep score, but Beecher still feels like he's won.

*

Between the two of them, they manage; Murphy's got a mostly-empty lighter in his pocket, and he puts the flame carefully to a tiny ball of bark and twigs, gets a tiny fire going. Even though it catches quickly, the sun's disappeared completely behind the hills by the time the fire's burning steadily enough to generate any heat. Beecher feeds it a stream of tiny twigs while Murphy rustles in the brush, gathering up enough fuel to keep it going.

Eventually, Murphy drops his armload of sticks nearby and slumps down beside the tiny fire. He lost his shiny Oswald badge somewhere, and he's looking more human than Beecher's ever seen him look. Beecher halfheartedly wonders if it's the badge, or maybe just the day they've been through, but he shrugs it off. Human or hack, the uniform's going to get them fucking killed.

The warmth and light and life of the fire catch up to Beecher quickly. He can feel himself starting to flag, shoulders drooping, but his whole body aches and the ground looks anything but soft. Then again, he doesn't exactly have a choice. He lowers himself carefully down, back against a tree trunk, and stretches his legs out toward the fire.

"How much farther to Lardner, do you think?" he asks, after a while. He doesn't really expect Murphy to respond - guy's been near silent all day - but it's sort of nice to hear his own voice, at least.

"Few hours, at least," Murphy says, somewhere in the darkness, beyond the fire's glow.

"Won't be so bad," Beecher says, but Murphy's already leaning forward, looking Beecher in the eye.

"Listen," he says. "Don't get your hopes up about that place. Chances are we ain't gonna find anyone alive anyway. Best we should hope for is supplies, maybe some food - "

Beecher laughs. "Come on, Murphy," he says. "Cheer up. You said it yourself, if anywhere made it, it'll be the prisons."

"I don't think so, Beecher."

"Why the hell not?" Beecher says. "We survived."

Now it's Murphy's turn to laugh. "You sure about that?" he says softly, and then he stretches out on his side, turns his back to Beecher, and doesn't speak again that night.

*

In the morning, they go three hours before the first green and white sign reading "Lardner State Penitentiary" appears on the side of the highway. They hike down the exit ramp and follow the new road up into the hills, toward the prison near the top of the mountain. It's steep and twisting but also abandoned, completely empty, and though his heart's pounding from exertion Beecher feels better, up here in the trees, most of them still holding on to their leaves.

They come upon Lardner suddenly; Beecher climbs to the top of a rise and there it is, laid out in front of him, its fences and walls neat and orderly, the spaces between them full of people. "I told you," he says, over his shoulder, as Murphy comes up the rise behind him. "I fucking told you there'd be - "

"Don't," Murphy says, "It's not gonna be what you - " but Beecher's done with him, Beecher's not listening, Beecher's taking long strides down the hill toward the prison. As he draws closer he can see guys hanging around near the gate, mattresses dragged out on the grass, less violence than he'd really expected. A bunch of cons, the end of the world, he'd thought there'd be at least a bit of noise and posturing - but there's no sign of it, just quiet idle conversation. He figures in street clothes, he's safe enough.

Soon, he can pick faces out of the crowd near the gate, old and young and white and black and all of them tired. He knows he's close enough to be seen but nobody will make eye contact with him, it's like nobody even notices him, and he spots a round-faced boy with anger written deep in his face, a man who could be Augustus if Augustus wasn't gone, a man in a tank top with dark hair cropped short -

\- and he stops, can't move any farther, can't take another step, because he recognizes the curve of that man's shoulder, the tilt of his head, that spot right at his hairline, and when Beecher draws a raspy breath the man turns and it can't be Chris Keller because Chris Keller is dead, Beecher had watched the life spill out of him, but somehow it is, it's impossible but he _is_ -

Chris's smile is slow and wide, warm in a way it had never been when he was alive. "Toby," he says. "You made it," and he steps forward to take Toby in his arms, wrap him up, bring him home.

*


End file.
